Elon Musk Photograph: Francois Mori/AP Some of the most prominent executives in the technology industry including the Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk are backing a non-profit artificial intelligence research company with funding of $1bn. Related: Artificial intelligence: ‘Homo sapiens will be split into a handful of gods and the rest of us’ The effort announced on Friday, known as OpenAI, joins a number of other initiatives by prominent companies like Google, Apple and IBM to tap advanced computer technology to solve problems such as recognising faces or translating languages. “Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return,” a blog post on OpenAI’s website said. Predicting that human-level artificial intelligence…